My hope is that Moondance will raise awareness, that it will nurture understanding among family and friends of couples who have endured IVF. Perhaps, for some people, it may even enable that all-important feeling of being understood and having their experience put into words.

There is nothing synthetic about the hideous pain that my mum went through giving birth to us (sorry, mum), there is nothing synthetic about hugs at bedtime, family holidays and first days of school. But most prominently, there is absolutely nothing synthetic about the fact that my parents loved my brother and I so much that they did absolutely everything within their power to have us.

A recent large study from Australia found that women undergoing IVF were at significantly higher risk of having a severely underweight or stillborn baby or one born prematurely or which dies within a few weeks of birth compared with women who conceived naturally.